Anna Ly

Ms. Ly is the Senior Manager of Programming and Operations for Sesame Workshop. Until 2015, she was the Senior Manager of Business and Creative Ventures for the Cooney Center. Previously, she completed an undergraduate degree in Business, Finance and Human-Computer Interaction with a focus in Communication Design from Carnegie Mellon. After several years in finance, she linked business with technology at IBM, where she worked for three years as a Business Strategy Consultant. She then completed a Master’s degree at Stanford’s Learning, Design and Technology program. At Stanford, her work focused on UX Research and Design, educational Tangible User Interfaces, and socio-emotional learning for children with autism. She has worked on interactive paper-based electronics including Papert Tronics and launched several applications to help children and adolescents with autism understand emotions in the context of their own lives, including Emotionary and Me.Mu for Kinect. While at Stanford, Anna worked for Intel as a UX Design Specialist where she focused on designing user experiences for the future, primarily in education. In the Fall of 2012, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center selected Anna to be the 2012-2013 Fellow to work on research and industry efforts under the Games and Learning and Learning Together core initiatives. A year later, Anna was named the Industry Fellow, a role in which she supported research efforts, assisted with strategy and partnerships, and created tools for media producers and investors. During her stint, the Fred Rogers Center named Anna an Early Career Fellow and provided her a grant to develop games for joint-media engagement. Now, in her new position as Senior Manager of Business and Creative Ventures at the Cooney Center, Anna is responsible for strategic planning and growth, forming partnerships, producing media and publications that inform and raise the sector, staying aware of trends, influencers, and innovation in digital media and learning, and building out game and media development projects. She is also part of the Content Innovation Lab group at Sesame, which develops innovative learning experiences for preschool age children using emerging technologies.

Recently posted by this author:

Last week we released Getting a Read on the App Stores by Sarah Vaala, Anna Ly, and Michael Levine. Here, Anna provides some tips for developers who are creating literacy apps for young children from an industry perspective. Ever since Apple’s App Store launched in 2008, business analysts, developers, and …

Attending SXSW Interactive is a little like being on safari. The day begins with anticipation, involves endless strategizing around where to be and what ballrooms offer the maximum return, and ends with a re-cap of which “big game” was spotted, what life-changing experiences were narrowly missed and what was photo …

Over the past few months, we’ve shared some highlights of the literacy app analysis that we are conducting with New America to learn more about the apps that families and educators are using to help children learn skills such as alphabet recognition, phonics, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. We have been …

About a month ago, we released a sneak preview of the literacy app analysis that we’re conducting with New America to discover more about the apps that families and educators are using to help children learn to read and communicate. As part of this preview, we provided a quick summary …

Apps for social communication, learning, and play are a prominent part of nearly every family’s life today. Are they having a similar impact on how families and educators help their children learn to read? And if so, what kinds of apps are they using? As part of Seeding Reading: Investing …

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center needs your vote for the SXSW Interactive 2015 conference! We have pulled together heavy hitters from LEGO, Nickelodeon, and MIT Media Lab to talk about how the engaging power of games can be used to promote playful learning. The design experts will share lessons learned …

This spring, I was given an extremely exciting opportunity when the Fred Rogers Center named me an Early Career Fellow. The mission of the Fred Rogers Center is to advance the fields of early learning and children’s media by acting as a catalyst for communication, collaboration, and creative change. This …

This year, I had the great privilege to attend the Digital Media and Learning Conference in Boston, Massachusetts, where I had organized a panel called “Creating Youth Builders – Promoting a New Game Design Ecosystem to Engage Hard-to-Reach Youth in Learning.” The heavy hitters on the panel included Jennifer Groff, …

This year, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center will be a part of not just one, but two sessions at the Digital Media and Learning Conference, an annual event supported by the MacArthur Foundation and organized by the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub. The conference, which takes place March 6-8th, …

** This survey is now closed. ** Back in 2012, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center embarked on a multi-stakeholder game design project, also known as “Hard Fun: Learning Mathematics,” funded by the NSF with lead designers at E-Line Media and premier researchers in neuroscience from University of Rochester and Johns …